I was in the midst of preparing a post about playing with paints when one isn’t feeling up to starting a full painting, when I received my email newsletter from Robert Genn’s site, Painter’s Keys. Genn writes a witty article about the reasons we give ourselves, and others, for why we can’t paint.
Continuing with my thoughts about playing with paints, I thought I’d share a playful exercise I learned in a class Martha Kisling taught last year. I daydream often about arctic skies and the Northern Lights. Below is an arctic sky that resulted from experimenting with using twisted paper towel on a still-wet sheet of 140 lb. cold press.
I cropped the bottom third off the painting for posting. My trees and mountains aren’t quite right, but I love the way the sky turned out. I recall a successful professional artist who commented that he threw at least half of his paintings away. If we can’t produce a masterpiece — and who can do that consistently! — we can have fun playing with new techniques. No excuses!
Now, if only I could follow that advice on a regular basis!
“It takes a long time to become young.” ~ Picasso
